January and February in History

January

1 Today is the 60th birthday of the distinguished actor Sergei Shakurov (born 1941). Shakurov, a People’s Artist of Russia, has acted in more than 50 movies and starred on the stages of the Moscow-based Theater on Malaya Bronnaya, the Russian Army Theater and the Stanislavsky Theater. Shakurov has invariably infused his heroes with his own strong character — often very thorny, independent, at times controversial. Not surprisingly, he is often seen as the embodiment of the “nastoyaschy muzhik” (“real guy”), which has appealed to Russia’s best film directors, who have put him in roles ranging from a journalist investigating Chernobyl in Mikhail Belikov’s Raspad (1992), a Red Army cavalry commander in Nikita Mikhalkov’s Ours Among Aliens – Aliens Among Us (1979), a kulak counter-revolutionary in Andron Konchalovsky’s Siberiade (1979) or a gallant gentleman in Pyotr Todorovsky’s The Beloved Woman of Mechanic Gavrilov.